According to Wagner's stage directions, Brunnhilde launches the great closing scene of Gotterdammerung in a tone of ''solemn exaltation'', commanding the vessels to pile up the logs for Siegfried's funeral pyre. The effect, in Helga Dernesch's performance, is of pleading rather than command: there is solemnity—but exaltation? In 1970 this was still a youthful voice, with a wide range but limited power. It was a voice more attuned to lyricism than to drama and, as such, it has usually and rightly been regarded as embodying all that is most challenging about Herbert von Karajan's approach to the Ring cycle. At a time when great Wagner singers were in exceptionally short supply (or had already been signed up by competing companies) Karajan placed his emphasis on the overwhelming power of the orchestral music, making this pre-eminently the Berlin Philharmonic's Ring. Despite its links with the Salzburg Festival, this is not a stage performance, and the singers are for the most part encouraged to avoid the rhetorical stresses and vocal colourings that are unavoidable on stage, not only to ensure that they are actually heard, but also to make them convincing participants in Wagner's great drama.
All in all the result is distinctive, and at times distinguished, without in the end satisfying the need to balance superb orchestral playing with uniformly authoritative singing. The weightiest of Karajan's leading female singers is probably Christa Ludwig, who in this context, and with an unusually subdued orchestra, seems to risk overstatement as Waltraute in Gotterdammerung, but who still gives a gloriously rich account of one of the work's most marvellous passages. Josephine Veasey is an exceptionally mellifluous Fricka, while Regine Crespin (the Walkure Brunnhilde) and Gundula Janowitz (Sieglinde and Gutrune) underline the vulnerability that, in more conventional readings, is easily swamped by heavier qualities. In Act 3 of Walkure, Crespin (like Dernesch in Act 2 of Gotterdammerung) finds an extra gear for the character's rage and despair without fully convincing one that this is a natural frame of mind for her. And while one can admire the sense Dernesch conveys, in Act 3 of Siegfried, of a young woman waking into a new, dangerous world, there is a certain lack of variety to her singing that suggests a deeper uneasiness with the role.
The most consistent and admirable performer in Karajan's Ring is Thomas Stewart, a Wotan (Walkure) and Wanderer who captures the character's human frustration and fallibility as well as something of his quasi-divine grandeur. That Stewart also sings Gunther—magnificently—indicates that his was not a voice of exceptional gravity or nobility. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, as the Rheingold Wotan, has more of the nobility, although the fact that this seems the most studio-bound of the four operas may explain why his voice sounds unusually tense in places, seeking to compensate for a certain lack of dramatic momentum. Darkness, if not tension, may initially seem to be missing from Karl Ridderbusch's young-sounding Hagen. This performance remains remarkable for the sinister understatement of the ''Watch'' and the scene with Alberich: but there is no lack of power in the summoning of the vassals, and Ridderbusch, like Zoltan Kelemen and Martti Talvela, is among the greatest strengths of the set. Nor can one complain of lack of vocal character whenever Gerhard Stolze (Loge, and Mime in Siegfried) is involved.
The three principal tenors are all quite different. Jon Vickers is the most imposing, with a voice strong and supple enough to renew regrets that he never tackled Siegfried. Of course he treats the text idiosyncratically, with 'i' sounds, as in ''Ich'', tending to 'ee'. But this is still the authentic, heroic sound, as thrilling a Siegmund as one could ever hope to hear. Jess Thomas was also a distinguished Wagnerian: in particular, as collectors well know, he was an excellent Lohengrin and Parsifal. The plaintive, spiritual edge that suits his voice to these roles is less appropriate for Siegfried, and so, even though Thomas sings with unfailing energy and flexibility, it is a reading 'against the grain', moving in the reflective passages (especially in Act 2), more awkward elsewhere. Helge Brilioth had a steelier, more extrovert quality, and is generally very successful in characterizing the Gotterdammerung Siegfried. His death scene is memorable, yet one senses Karajan succumbing to the temptation to cover the voice with the sheer richness of orchestral incident. And when the voice is finally silent, it is richness of texture rather than rawness of emotion that carries over into the Funeral March. Other conductors dig deeper here, even though there is nothing in the least dull or constricted about the quality of the recorded sound. If anything, the remasterings have produced an over-burnished timbre, which verges on coarseness in some of the more luridly orchestrated transitions—that in Act 3 of Siegfried, for example. And, although the engineers have been rightly praised for giving the voices a relatively forward balance, it is idle to pretend that this always sounds as natural an acoustic as today's digital techniques can achieve.
There are many passages of great excitement in this performance. Despite the occasional epi- sode—the piling up of the gold in the last scene of Rheingold, for example—that is a little staid, Karajan's reading in general sweeps all before it in the interests of dramatic force. Beyond question, this conductor had the measure of the Ring's intricate, delicately balanced form, between the local 'flow' and the large-scale 'sweep'. Certain more recent Wagner conductors could learn from him in this respect, and it is this sense of overall command and control that does most to ensure that this performance deserves a permanent place in the collection of recommendable Wagner studio recordings.'